Lethe
by Rabbitprint
Summary: Spoilers for MSQ 5.0, set pre-game. Ascian fic, Emet-Selch POV. The true loss of Amaurot has never been a physical one.


Lahabrea finds him often before the end.

The man gives little forewarning each time, swinging in and out of Emet-Selch's offices like a pendulum, the velocity of his mass defined in erratic orbits where each slice of motion carves the space around it. His brilliance is undimmed by the Final Days - as they are already being called, even by those who hope to live through it. Emet-Selch cannot deny the name. Whether his people survive or not, something in their standards will have changed. Something about their people will have ended, if only to keep such a tragedy from happening again.

Lahabrea does not deny it either. Not with his tongue. In the face of annihilation, he burns. He is brilliant, raging and alive: defiant with creativity, drafting idea after idea, as if the end of their star is a deadline he has staked every onze of pride upon, and he intends to offer up a performance like no other.

Lahabrea has ever known the danger of stagnation. He combats that enemy with himself, leading by example and arguing both sides of every debate with equal fervor, seeking stimulation of thought rather than allowing their people's imaginations to settle. Their Speaker is a creature of quicksilver, flowing from one idea to another even as he changes tactics - and he changes them even more often with Emet-Selch.

He comes just as Emet-Selch is finishing up the reports of weakening symbiosis conduits in the eastern part of the Capitol: their efficiency is dropping, and has been even before the news of chaos in their sister city. The conduits themselves are designed to automatically self-repair, able to perform autonomous maintenance so long as they have the right balance of aetheric elements available. He had inherited the concepts from the previous Emet-Selch, and the philosophy behind them is solid; if the machinery is failing, it is because of the aether which should be supporting them.

Lahabrea breaks through all of that concentration. He shoves open the door without bothering to knock, a bundle of polished crystals lashed neatly together in his arms. "Emet-Selch," he announces, nudging the door shut behind him with his heel. "Pay _attention_ to me."

Emet-Selch darts his gaze up and then stills it, attempting not to betray how readily he had obeyed. "Some of us are _working_, Lahabrea," he replies mildly, even as he arches an eyebrow in curiosity.

Lahabrea dismisses his protest with a roll of his eyes. "You'll appreciate this." Before any other refusals can be made, the man hefts the creation matrix in his arms and sets it on Emet-Selch's desk, flattening out the reports beneath its weight. The concept is high-grade, inscribed on a dozen perfect discs, each no thicker than his smallest finger. As Emet-Selch reaches out to idly shuffle the order of them, he watches the harmonies flex dynamically from crystal to crystal, like droplets of water skittering away under pressure.

Despite himself, he _is_ interested. The order of arrangement alone is a riddle; each disc produces a different pattern depending on its proximity to the rest. The musical combinations are fascinating, hinting at infinities. What Lahabrea has ferried forth is art.

He pinpoints the first slice easily - the only one that doesn't transform upon contact with his fingers. "This is one of Igeyohrm's compositions," Emet-Selch remarks after reading only half the introduction. He splays out the remaining crystal slices in a glistening fan, reading the overlapping outlines of the matrix. "I haven't seen it before. Is it new?"

"Finished a mere two suns ago. A rush job, but she always seems to press through in the end." Lahabrea shrugs, an air of careless indifference despite being the one to burst into Emet-Selch's personal offices. "Even with everything else going on, it must still be properly evaluated - and I happen to be part of the committee for this one. Or, rather, I _requested_ to be the representative from the Words. She's been preening over it for weeks now, I can't let her slip it past anyone else." A roll of his eyes towards the ceiling, but the gesture is defanged by the underlying pride coating his tongue: Igeyohrm must have done something truly remarkable this time.

Intrigued now beyond his other tasks, Emet-Selch extends a hand and pulls the second crystal towards him. The design has all her fingerprints over it. Each aetheric flow peaks in contrasting waves to better emphasize the instruments assigned to each melody. The elements are in perpetual motion. It is a fine piece of craftsmanship, though not without Igeyohrm's customary habit of overenthusiastically driving every note home.

But she is Ascian at heart, and that heart is a careful one. Even in the tumult, there is a kindness to it: a restraint which is born of precision, and the need for mindfulness when one's mind can either create or break the world itself. There are multiple plateaus that allow the crafter to pause, lest they become overwhelmed by the energies on tap. Her concept easily sets the course while still giving proper space for others to explore, lending her talents to aid them so that they, too, may add their own interpretation to the design, sharing the end result as a mutual triumph.

One cannot overbear with a concept, after all. To do so would quash the beauty of a million quieter voices under the brazenness of a single opinion. Shouting does nothing to respect those who do not lift their own notes as high - it merely invites mob rule.

Ascian society does not champion only the loudest. It makes room for the softest among them, and champions it all.

Emet-Selch weaves the concept absently with half his attention, but that half is carefully schooled to keep the magicks from wandering. Igeyohrm has an innate passion for her work, one that she often struggles to keep in check. He walks the song open while bearing this in mind, watching for clear splits between notes and rest beats, allowing energies to be summoned into being without distorting their surroundings. It is a symphony with easily a hundred different instruments intermingling; such complexity could daunt a novice, but thanks to the deft way that Igeyohrm has linked each section together, even a single performer can steer them all.

Igeyohrm has done well, he decides. All the outcomes are beautiful. Her design will empower a broad range of creators. Whether to choose her notes or their own, any citizen would feel accomplished in their craft by the end.

It is an outstanding piece of work.

He is just wrapping up the final crescendo - a triumph of stringed instruments and rolling notes, when Lahabrea sighs laboriously and flops down on the desk, wrinkling a whole spread of drainage plans. "Sing the concept with me, Emet-Selch," he demands - like a child, selfish and yet endearing for it. He flicks his fingers limply along Emet-Selch's reports, petulantly knocking aside a pen. "This conjuration befits a partner, I cannot grasp it as quickly on my own."

"But you _can _still grasp it." Made stubborn for the sake of his crumpled paperwork, Emet-Selch pushes the matrix disc up into the air with his fingertips. It bobs obediently, waiting for the rest of its activation.

He leans back in his chair, crossing his arms. "And my own participation would surely alter your results, would it not?"

The look Lahabrea gives him is exasperated twofold: fond, for knowing the nature of his resistance, and similarly no less aggravated to receive it. "A change in one's routine can allow the subconscious to work more effectively on problem-solving," the man declares, rolling naturally into the familiar metronome of debate, a patter as soothing as the ocean. "By allocating my conscious attention to matters of a separate vein, the remainder of my mind's facilities would be free to consider critical issues from another angle. So," he concludes shamelessly, "you should lend your creative energies to me, so that I can better find a way to help save our world."

The logic is as brazen as they come. A burst of laughter sputters out of Emet-Selch's mouth; he presents his hands in surrender, helpless against the utter boldness of Lahabrea's ploy. "Is _this_ how you intend to spend the days before our possible destruction?"

Lahabrea leans over the desk, the palm of his hand shoving up his own mask to reveal the full of his expression. His hair rumples and bunches over the rim; despite the smug curve of his lips, his eyes gleam with ferocity.

"I am like our star, Emet-Selch," the man utters. "I will not go to my end quietly."

Under such intensity, Emet-Selch can do little but stare back, transfixed by the pure fury of Lahabrea's passion. "A councilmember as responsible as Emet-Selch does not have the time for song," he attempts tartly. "Particularly not while our city dwells in the grip of fear, and our kin across the waters die from powers twisted out of their control."

"No," Lahabrea agrees, and leans further in, until all Emet-Selch can focus on is the whisper of the other man's voice against his ear, the aether-sweet smell of the Words still lingering on his skin. "But _Hades_ does."

* * *

They spin the groundwork into existence, just as deftly as Lahabrea had spun his words. Wards spider out along the office's walls, defining the room's boundaries in a neat grid. Neither one of them have voices which are trained to perform on their own; thankfully, Igeyohrm's design does not require such talent. The music is already part of the invocation. All they need to do is fuel it with their own passion, of which Lahabrea has more than enough to provide

Lahabrea is right about him, of course. The Architect of his title is accurate; Emet-Selch cannot resist the urge to build.

It is Emet-Selch's office, so he lays out all the practical steps to prevent their energies from disturbing the rooms around them. Shields snap into place to prevent aether from leaking over the boundaries, shunts to reroute excess power back into the design. He invokes only the sparsest, cleanest lines of control, not bothering with anything more elaborate than the basics. They have created together before, both for formal projects and personal recreation; Emet-Selch knows how quickly Lahabrea will gallop ahead.

It is a partnership of thought and thoughtfulness, as one must observe when the raw energies of creation are always at hand. When a mind can reshape the world and breathe life into dreams, that mind cannot be allowed to rot. Distracted builders summon distorted results, and there is no greater distraction than that of the heart. Though they tease and play in turns, delighting in sharpness of wit as its own challenge, any Ascian who truly loathed their peers would find their own creations revealing the truth. Contempt, disdain, cruelty - all will show themselves in the ruins of your work. There are no such things as secret hatreds when the table you are shaping grows fangs, and launches itself for your neighbor's throat.

It takes so little, after all. A stray thought of anger, of resentment, of selfishness beyond bounds - a single bitterness, and the concept in your hands will twist. A plant may spawn with coiled thorns; a hawk could come to life while spitting fountains of acid, shrieking proof of your own inattention.

In Amaurot, gentleness is not a weakness: it is a necessity.

The first note chimes out with the voice of a flute, rolling and rising as it splits into three violins. The next disc glimmers to life as Lahabrea infuses it with his aether, colors flickering around its rim to indicate another sequence of potential connections. He picks seemingly at random, evoking a flurry of woodwinds that seem mismatched until the notes all descend together, harmonizing in deep, thrumming tones. Aether sizzles through Lahabrea's fingers as he concentrates only on its distillation, dragging it out from his own natural reserves without heeding the fluctuations of power around him; without even asking, he trusts Emet-Selch to be there instead.

Lahabrea's need beckons, and Emet-Selch meets it instinctively, weaving together in a harmony made effortless by long years of practice. For every stray comet their Speaker scatters, Emet-Selch sets a net to catch it, deftly retuning and returning each note of aether into perfect balance. Lahabrea's colors sprawl all over the room, gleaming like ink brewed from lightning; Emet-Selch blends them with his own aether, and then pulls contrasting forces from the Lifestream to anchor each one, energies blurring through his fingers as he safely grounds each flow down.

It's meant to be a conjuration for pairs - that much is obvious. But after only a few steps, Lahabrea impatiently breaks away from Emet-Selch anyway, summoning torrents of sound that twist like light throughout the chamber. The galaxy spins around him, his arms stretched in beckoning towards the sky; too proud to be shackled to a single touch, his partner is all of existence itself.

* * *

In the end, Emet-Selch's people call for a savior - but in the Ascian manner. They are all builders by training, shapers by nature; they are born with the instinct to create, weaving aether into forms which are limited only by their imaginations.

All of them know that in order to find salvation, you must first be willing to make it with your own hands.

It is a rushed decision when they summon Him - their fourteenth seat is still empty, their errant companion still arguing for more time, more information gathered, more questions asked and voices heard, which _is_ only right and fair to have other viewpoints gauged - but it has the intended effect. The price is that of life given freely, love offered without hesitation. Their people hear the toll and agree. It is the same exchange as the occasional aether taken from other beings to create their food, their clothing, their homes: those who are Ascian accept and understand that it is their turn to be the ones who give this time.

Zodiark breathes, and lives.

Given its own self-aware soul, the star is stable - but not viable. Again, the Ascians must rebuild. Creation requires fuel before it can multiply; again, Emet-Selch's people agree to become part of that cycle. Like a field resown with seed, blessed with sun and rain, the new plants and animals that rise will offer strength back to the world. And - once viable aether has rooted itself successfully, some Amaurotines point out - it is possible to exchange it back once more. The principle is as simple as any lesson in the classroom. Aether flows to aether. Life can be returned to those who first lent it.

That is how it should have gone.

There are few other options. The grief which hangs over their cities is as heavy as a second ruin, and nearly as debilitating. Even though the disaster of unbidden creation has passed, sorrow twists the remaining Ascians in ways no less horrific - making it nearly impossible to conjure so much as a glass of water without something going wrong.

Survivor's guilt guts them all. Slain lovers return in the simplest of conjurations, their faces still streaked with blood and agony. Children sob as they summon phantasms of lost caretakers instead of their lesson concepts; they wail twice-over as those phantasms are destroyed, the aether reclaimed and dispersed safely. Each empty home stands as a reminder of guilt for those whose lives were not given. Each half-empty home is worse. The nightmares this time are born from a tragedy which cannot be fought, and the corruption of it leaks steadily into Emet-Selch's people, scarring them again as they cannot escape the horror that renews itself with every stray, distracted thought.

The Words of Lahabrea become a carrion pit.

Emet-Selch tries to repair a garden one afternoon, and finds that all the branches are made of flowering bones. He steps through the pathways delicately, gauging the extent of the corruption. His feet crunch across shed ribs, metatarsals, vertebrae. Children's skulls dangle ready for harvest. He tries to wipe them away, dissolving them back into aether, and only succeeds in changing them into a hail of masks which clatter down around his feet, identical and empty.

They cannot endure this. If there is to be healing - of the mind, of the heart - these wounds must be undone.

But they rush into their second disaster, just as they had bled through their first; those who were not part of the summoning resist the unfettered presence of the new god at their table. _Zodiark is not Ascian_, they point out, ruthlessly accurate. _Though Zodiark was of Ascian design, His motivations are purely His own. We must study first_ \- the dissenters plead - _both Him, and these new races_. _Zodiark is the one who defines the amount of recompense, and we do not know if He sets those terms with conservation or with greed. We must _**_learn _**_His intentions, must measure and understand if His price is fair. Is there not another bargain which would serve? This star is vast enough to share; let these younger beings have their portion, and we may yet renew our spirits by sharing with them in turn._

_Is not diversity what we seek, and stagnation what we fear?_

Before there is a chance for further dialogue, the Convocation's errant fourteenth joins the voices of those requesting a pause, still arguing for patience and for all factors to be explored first. _Time_ is what they insist on; it skews the balance. The clamour of opinions rises faster than it can be rationed, overflowing the debate chambers and leaving questions unanswered. Each side is scattered in their evidence. In the emptiness of a final decision, they summon their own means of holding Zodiark in check - its sole design parameter is to counter Him, and thus, pure opposition defines this new being. This _Hydaelyn_.

There is no middle ground for gods. A new faction of Emet-Selch's people fall prey to the exact same enslavement by a foreign will: before either side can stop Her, Hydaelyn makes their decision for them.

Hydaelyn makes victims of them all.

* * *

Igeyohrm's music does not survive the sundering.

Igeyohrm herself meets the same fate. Almost everyone does. Nabriales, Mitron, Halmarut - all ruined. Those tempered by Zodiark, those by Hydaelyn, those caught between with no allegiance to either side, still weighing debate points in the halls when the star is rent. Even their fourteenth is dissected, shredded like a cubus turned into raw materials, spattered on impact like paint splashed across a row of canvases. Hydaelyn has no more mercy than that of Her adversary; She breaks Her chosen children as freely as She ruins those of Her sworn enemy.

Hydaelyn's power comes for Emet-Selch as well. In the sudden agony of the world splitting apart around them, he feels his body crisp away as a mere afterthought, unable to bear the energies of a star's death and rebirth. His muscles incinerate on blackening bones, fat bubbling and igniting - but it is his soul which burns the most, each part of him being pulled into fourteen different directions, his very thoughts being chopped apart into smaller and smaller pieces until he is chaff in the storm.

He almost lets the pain take him. Then something in him rallies, some miniscule grain of stubbornness that he clings to even when he barely remembers his own names. He packs his awareness tightly around the sensation, refusing to let any fragment of himself be wicked away. His own identity is his beacon, and he feeds it with every emotion he can cling to, until the Source finishes trembling and curls in upon itself, weakened into dormancy.

Emet-Selch is alive. Aware. Disembodied, true. But still himself.

Like Zodiark, Hydaelyn made Her own decisions outside the will of any Ascian creators: the mortal races have kept their flesh, but Amaurot stands empty. Her own makers have been murdered by Her hands. Emet-Selch lingers there, even when he knows there is no hope for further survivors. He is the Architect; his duty is to annotate the corpse of their city as thoroughly as any other part of their nation.

Lahabrea finds him eventually, after they have staggered through the shock of it and found mortal shells which can contain them. He is the least affected of them all; in retrospect, it is no surprise that their Speaker would have defied even a god's demand to lessen himself. As usual, he is the one who breaks the silence, after watching Emet-Selch mechanically pick through the rubble for most of a day, trying to get accustomed to the new shape of a borrowed body. They are both smaller now, so much smaller. Amaurot looms over them as if they are children again, forced to restart their lives once more from infancy.

"Three survivors of a shattered nation, their star broken into pieces and strewn throughout the vast rift." Lahabrea's proclamation is hoarse where it should have rung clear, but the stubbornness of it is undimmed. "The souls of their brethren hidden in kind, their cities left empty and ruined. Yet these survivors must repair an entire world and all its creatures, heal one wounded god and stop another. It sounds," he adds, in a more normal tone, "like a tale for the stage. A legend, save that it is so very sour to be the one actually living through it."

It sounds grander in the abstract, indeed. Emet-Selch grimaces, clambering over the rubble. He keeps crafting the wrong size of boots, and they constantly seek to slip off his feet. "It _will _be a story for them," he answers. The reassurance feels weak; he distracts himself by prodding at a dislodged bench, its metal legs upended into the air. "One that can be penned into the Records once our people are returned, and which can be looked back upon as simply another opportunity to learn."

"_I_ wouldn't submit Hydaelyn's concept to the Bureau for approval, that much is clear." The jest is half-serious as Lahabrea squints down at him from his perch on a fallen tree. "And I would _also_ suggest instituting a mandatory five-year waiting period on the summoning of any future gods." The man is quiet for a span of heartbeats, and then swings a foot restlessly. "What do you think of our chances, Emet-Selch? Be honest with me."

Emet-Selch considers the factors on hand, borrowing every rationalization he can find in order to stave off discouragement. "You, Elidibus, myself - we may be few, but we have lost none of our powers. Weakened lives have come to the other races, but our spirits will not fade over the years. So long as we remain intact, it will only be a matter of time before the legacies of our people are returned to life." He sighs, and then peers at a gap between two shattered street tiles, trying to determine if the gleam he spotted was metal, or a concept matrix. "Now stop writing poetry, and come down here to give me a hand."

The odds are still daunting, even with immortality on their side. Only three of them remain to find a way to restore the world, and there is as little choice now as there was before. Zodiark's presence wheezes weakly in the void between the Source and its lesser echoes - and even without his master's command, Emet-Selch would have done it anyway. They lost half their people to save the rest; half again to restore life to the world. Now their quartered lives have been split fourteen ways over, a multiplication of divisions that only diminishes their people further, fractions without pause.

There is one more division, and this one supplants the rest.

Ascian against Ascian. Emet-Selch cannot wrap his mind around it. To quarrel by force, instead of through debate. There have always been strong voices on the floor, wielding words like accusations, thrilling in occasional philosophical schisms - but none of it had true condemnation behind it, and at the end of the day, everyone had still been willing to clasp hands and consider the rhetoric merely another step forward in collective growth.

How much of it is Hydaelyn's doing - Her perversion of their people, making them into Her own enthralled weapons - Emet-Selch does not know. Summoned for the purpose of restraining Zodiark's power, it is inevitable that Hydaelyn would see any in His service as Her enemy. She must be destroyed. Not simply to free Zodiark, but also to free those of their people She has taken from them.

He must stop them carefully, without permanent harm, so they can study their mistakes and document them against a second time. Something has been shattered, twisted on its axis, and now his people are bound to follow the orders of two creatures who loathe one another by their very nature. Even if Zodiark asked for more than He needed, even _if _Hydaelyn was truly needed to arrest and redress that price - Emet-Selch does not know, and _cannot_, not until everything is brought back to its original state so that they can re-evaluate it properly.

Three survivors, to save a world. They must eliminate Hydaelyn. They must save their people, and bring everyone they can back.

Emet-Selch thinks about every person he can remember, and every person _they _might know in turn, radiating onwards in one vast community, and yet - like him now, in his borrowed flesh - it still feels too small.

* * *

He finds the first of Igeyohrm's shards, of all things, placidly tending a herd of yaks on the Source. Her spirit is a tiny thing, blinking and jagged with its song - but its color is recognizable despite its dimness, and he watches it with the relief of a dying man finding water in the desert.

She is even more lessened than he. This fragment of her soul barely counts as an identity, buried deep within the body of a hyur, fooled into believing itself to be a mortal in truth. So thin, so fragile, so lacking of its vibrancy. If this had been before the Sundering, he would have called for a physicker to restore her aether levels immediately; as it is, he has only himself.

"Do you remember who you are?" he finally asks the little shadow, such a frail imitation of the woman he once knew. He is wearing a miqo'te's body today, thankfully, dressed properly at last; he looks like the rest of the mortals, and blends in well enough.

She looks up at him from her milking stool, gaping in confusion at the figure who appeared out of nowhere, and who is reaching down to seize her shirt and haul her up with a strength far beyond his slender frame.

Before she can struggle, he lets his sigil glow across his face, blooming in a spread of livid, jagged lines. She gasps, startled, and in the advantage of the moment, Emet-Selch presses his mouth against hers, and _remembers_ all that passion back into her, drawing out the pattern of her soul from his memory, like a concept he is summoning into being.

She provides the life; he offers the design. In his thoughts, Emet-Selch unreels everything he knows about her, every impression and conversation he can recall, every art of hers that he has ever seen crafted. Like an architectural blueprint, he holds the details of Igeyohrm's past up against her living aether, matching it to the contours of her soul as easily as he had once aligned his own power to symphonies of her making.

_I _**_know_**_ you_, his heart whispers to Igeyorhm, over and over. _This is who you were. This is who you still can be._

He is her living repository of history, standing in place for her lack. She does not remember Amaurot; Emet-Selch recalls it for her, visualizing her offices there, the ceremony when she had first been given the title of Igeyorhm - the bravery of her smile as she was bequeathed the concept for her new mask, even as it had been tinged by nervousness. He lists out every honor she had won in the Akadaemia Anyder, every concept he can recall with her signature attributed to its making. He holds the picture of her together inside his own soul, overbrimming with the fullness of her strength, until slowly - point by point, like stars being named inside constellations - enough resonance floods through the tiny shard to quicken her smothered memories, and Igeyohrm finally gasps into waking.

"Emet-Selch," she gasps in recognition. He releases her shoulders so that she can stagger away. She reels back, casting a wild gaze at the world around her - and then promptly doubles over, dry-heaving, which Emet-Selch deliberately does not take as an insult, wiping the dampness of their shared spit away on the back of his hand.

He gives her the time to process her new reality, knowing how unsettling it can be to try and cram the senses of a giant into the tiny body of a mortal. Eventually she straightens up, panting as she manages to reorient herself to her own limbs. Her soul is already struggling to retain the full of her identity and power inside it. It can barely keep itself intact with so little of her heritage available in such a form, let alone the entire record of their people.

One look at her, and he can tell: Igeyohrm will not be able to restore others of their kind. The attempt would likely sap her own power dry, trying to invoke the life of another while still retaining her own. And if _she _cannot - with all her courage, her magnificent boldness that rivals even Lahabrea - then none of the other sundered will be able to, either.

It is enough that she remembers herself, Emet-Selch reasons. Each survivor will make a difference.

"Our people were never meant to endure this," he agrees firmly, gathering the necessary resolve for the next step, when he must show Igeyohrm the shards and all they entail. "But now that you are here, we are one step closer to repairing this tragedy."

Yet it is too soon for Igeyohrm to rally, newly revived into a world which has wiped their kind from existence. She whirls, torn between outrage and horror at the monstrosity that Hydaelyn has wrought upon the living; her gaze darts fruitlessly between the new sky, the ocean, the foreign shape of her borrowed hands.

"How can this _be_," she finally demands of it all, her anguish fresh as she confronts the enormity of their loss - and for this, Emet-Selch has no answer.

* * *

How indeed.

The younger races have not been improved by being sundered across thirteen reflections. The myriad shards of the Source should have offered up even greater variety, a banquet of fresh thoughts and forms - but they are all disappointingly the _same_, a perpetual repetition of vices which remain constant in their greed and terror. Haunted by their new mortality and weakened without the resources to combat it, the sundered turn to preying upon everything around them instead. They plaster over vulnerability with hostility, defend themselves with spite. They hate one another gladly, all in order to justify their own rejections.

How the dissenters against Zodiark would have wept to see their theories proven false, Emet-Selch thinks.

It seems like such little differences between his people and theirs. A lack of innate aether, and the resulting lack of control over it. Fear of starvation which comes from not being able to conjure food, of death by cold or dehydration. Having limited resources encourages hoarding; the Lifestream is a distant abstraction to these younger races, not an ever-present bounty of energy to share and be shared with.

Such little differences. But the ripples - like an unbalanced aether equation, or the introduction of another species into an ecosystem - change everything.

He fumbles when he tries to speak with them, as if each word has similarly been splintered into fourteen parts, each inflection forced to stand in place of the whole. Mortals push and press in unfamiliar ways, ignoring all of his requests for consideration. He tries to ask about community, about the clarity of thought necessary behind each word and action, about unity of people - all of it fails. Given the need for survival, the mortal races find their easiest meals to be one another. Their new nations survive through closed boundaries, an endless jockeying of rank which rewards degrading others in order to justify denying them kindness. Those who are within the circle get fed. Those who are shunned, starve.

Without the same degree of power innately at hand, these new races have never been forced to learn responsibility for their impact upon the world. Without being forced, they do not bother. It is impossible, they say, it is _harmful_ even to _try_ living with such constant self-control. Such standards are unrealistic. Unhealthy. _Wrong_. Compassion breaks you, leaves you open to being taken advantage of; sharing generosities only makes you easier to exploit. A peaceful nation always hides corruption at its root, or a fatal weakness of spirit.

And yet they _extol _themselves for it, for their neglect of one another and of their entire star, shouting about how their nobility rises above all others, and how even their imperfections contribute to their unmatched value. Despite all their reflections, all their potential for imagination, they can only conceive of other creatures whose hearts behave exactly like their own - and by their denials, they deny Emet-Selch's entire people from existence.

Emet-Selch tries to love them anyway. Every Ascian city is in ruins because some of them wished to give these creatures a chance - he gives that same chance now, belatedly, though there is no one left to see it. He speaks with engineers, with artists both written and spoken, combing the newer races in search of his own people's souls. He tries to have children, mortal ones, raising them with Ascian principles from the very moments of their births, testing to see if they will keep their minds open to wonder, to creativity, to awe.

Each time, his efforts are met by mockery and confusion. His descendents turn to anger; his lineage decays. _This is how the natural world should be_, the mortal races insist. Angry with itself, _feeding_ upon itself, its people forced to compete for resources simply to stay alive, stuffing their mouths while others starve. This is the world: _ah, _they say, _isn't it _**_beautiful?_**

This is not the true shape of their star. This is not how life must always be, not as Emet-Selch knows it. And yet, it is a new reality - one which these shadows make more tangible with each sun that passes, until it is fast-becoming the only truth at all.

* * *

Over and over, he hears, _we do not understand_.

It is the only thing they all have in common: sundered and unsundered, Ascian and mortal alike.

* * *

Darkness fills the Thirteenth with ease. Driven by rising confidence, Igeyohrm claims her victories swiftly, sparing no mercy for the child Warrior that Hydaelyn had flung forth and abandoned like a neglectful parent hoping for Her table to be lightened by one. Each tipping point folds naturally into the next. The technique is a good one: it is the Light's champions themselves who willingly betray their shard, seizing power and then developing a taste for it. Each fresh battle justifies their greed. They turn to the same exact hungers as the creatures they hunt, capturing Primals in search of more powerful tools, glutting themselves on aether until they finally turn on each other.

Slowly, step by step, each hero becomes the very thing they fight against, until there is no longer any distinction between themselves and what they hate.

That is when they fall.

Emet-Selch should have rejoiced at the first step towards Zodiark's revival - but the aether imbalance crests too soon. Darkness rushes in before they can find a way to properly direct the shard's energies towards the Source, devouring everything on the Thirteenth until all other elements evaporate, and the balance required to sustain life snaps completely. Aether sloughs away from the star in waves, like layers of diseased skin being parted from the muscle beneath. Its lingering drops are sucked into the bellies of the voidsent which battle over the remains, burrowing through the fallen and each other while eternal starvation claims them.

Just like that, all chance of an Ascian victory vanishes as well. There is no purpose in trying to force the Thirteenth back into the Source; there is nothing left to feed the latter. The full extent of the loss is greater still. Not only has the shard's energy been lost, but so have the fractional souls which were part of its Lifestream. A few have been salvaged already, Hydaelyn's Warrior among them. Others are still trapped, distorted into voidsent. The rest are gone.

With little else to do save observe its final spasms, Emet-Selch travels to the shard's moon - the cold, inert piece of Zodiark which hangs suspended with no way to reclaim it. Lahabrea and Elidibus still trawl the Thirteenth's surface, accompanied by a handful of other Ascians they have recovered from other stars. Igeyohrm is not among them; she had already been brought safely to the moon, wrestled away from her frantic efforts to try and hold the shard's balance in place with her own hands to the very last, to the point of being nearly devoured by its collapse.

She sits, huddled, facing the shard as it dies. The last dregs of aether remaining on the surface are oily swirls of chaos, shimmering with melting rainbows as they glitter, are drained, and evaporate forever. It bulges at times, as if vast bubbles are rising from some chemical reaction at its core, or as if there is something incubating in the shard's heart which is finally trying to hatch.

As Emet-Selch lands, his feet lightly dusting the moon's surface, Igeyohrm stirs. She does not take her gaze away from the carnage below. "I just eradicated part of our people's souls, Emet-Selch." Her voice is steady, but barely so. "Hydaelyn Herself would applaud me."

He regards the picture of the Thirteenth, already exhausted by its fate. "Not all of them," he replies wearily, pointlessly. Nothing he could say would mean anything now. They are platitudes more suited for a classroom, an accident in the Akadaemia Anyder - not reality. "And it will not be forever. Our lord must be able to fix it. We _must_ believe that He can."

Igeyohrm lifts her head as if it has trebled in weight, hauling herself upright only through sheer will alone. Her eyes fix on him, whites wild. "Do you?" she asks. It borders on heresy. "Do you _believe_, Emet-Selch?"

The answer should be easy on his tongue.

But even as Emet-Selch opens his mouth, he feels a strange, tentative despair winding through him, shearing him away from common sense as neatly as a skinning knife. "I believe that if He cannot, then nothing in all creation will matter," he answers honestly, quietly, like the very first utterance that might have shaped a star. "If our god cannot undo this, then no force can - and so there is no purpose in wondering, for there is no purpose in _anything _anymore, and our failure was absolute from the start."

It is honest, and of as little comfort to him as to her. Igeyohrm curls over onto herself, shoulders heaving as she finally breaks into open sobs, the grief raw enough that it racks her completely in its grip.

Instinct urges him to console her. If this were Amaurot, he would already be by her side. But it is not, and Emet-Selch turns his face away quickly as a new realization spikes like ice in his belly. Doing so does not spare him from the truth: he cannot escape the awareness that the next time he revives Igeyohrm, it will be with this memory burned in the center. _This_ will be the image that his mind will stain her with, over and over each time he hears her name.

He will never remember her the same way again. Only three creatures exist who can call Igeyohrm back from oblivion, and of that count, Emet-Selch has already lost her forever.

* * *

He thinks he will remember the sound of her screaming when even the last ocean has dried into dust.

* * *

_We are stronger together_, Elidibus reminds them, after the Thirteenth. It is a truth which is agonizing to be reminded of - agonizing because it never needed a reminder before. All of them have dwelt for thousands of years in the safe, nurturing world of their people, knowing both respect and being respected. Being thrown among the mortal races is like being plunged into a hurricane whose water is laced with acid, the air too polluted to breathe, drowned out by endless angers until any escape feels like a dream.

The sundered Ascians they recover look to the three of them, for example and encouragement both. There is none to give.

It is hard upon the members of the Convocation, but even worse for those who are untempered by Zodiark, who do not have an enforced devotion to their god compelling them whenever their own resolve flags. Emet-Selch watches their faces whenever he brings them back, forced to continually witness the sudden horror in their eyes, the dawning terror of awareness. Their sorrows bloom endlessly each time, stricken by the fate which has shattered themselves and the rest of their people, and the enormity of the task still waiting.

He cannot bear the necessity of dragging yet another of their kind back to this misery, ripping them out of the blissful ignorance of sleep - and yet, he must. Only he, Lahabrea, and Elidibus are capable of this task. They have no choice.

He turns to the remaining shards in hopes of finding something to keep them strong, even as a lukewarm panacea. Instead, he hears the same tiresome justifications for hypocrisy, for hostilities between clans, for conquest and condemnation. A thousand smirking faces snipe and sneer and gossip around each other, regurgitating the same petty arguments for _centuries_, passing it on to their children to repeat, and then their children's children. They tell one another stories to feel better about rejecting strangers, all so that their own hands can remain clean. They laugh, and absolve one another of guilt.

Over and over in these new worlds, Emet-Selch hears that softness is a flaw - and so violence is made acceptable against it. That to wear the same mask and robes as your kinsfolk is a sign that your people are being taught to hate themselves and each other, stifling creativity instead of permitting only the loudest voices to dominate. That community destroys the individual, that altruism is a self-serving lie. That peace is an inevitable ruiner of society; only aggression can whet a race properly to survive.

To hear the sundered speak, Emet-Selch's people were defined by elitism and oppression, trapped beneath black cowls and callousness.

They do not listen to him when he signals discomfort; they do not acknowledge the same cues as the debate floor, and plow loudly across his every protest. They lash out when Emet-Selch asks them to stop. He drowns in their carelessness, unable to stem their judgements - until he begins to imagine violence himself out of desperation, yearning to shove them away just so he can carve out a space for himself to breathe.

He has spent a lifetime learning words, and all of them are wasted here, because mortals have made them meaningless.

If this had been the the Hall of Rhetoric, Emet-Selch would have been allowed to call a halt to this long ago, requesting a pause in their discourse, a request to set boundaries around this branch of debate. But Amaurot no longer stands. There are only a handful of Ascians pitted against thirteen remaining stars, and on each and every one, they have no home. They have lost their bodies, their nation - but it is the loss of _ideals_ which is killing them the most, as if they are the only voices left shouting against a hurricane.

There are none among these sundered who sees exactly why these things matter. There are none who acknowledge it why it hurts so much that they go ignored.

In that erasure, the mortal races erase Emet-Selch too. They unmake him through the belief that he is an impossibility, as if all of Amaurot and its sister cities are discarded concepts, not even worth a record. With their inability to perceive the entire depth of reality, the newer races cannot even grasp what they are missing - and in doing so, they believe they are missing _nothing_, and to protest otherwise is fallacy.

_This is just how the world is_, they say. _This is natural_.

Without the presence of Amaurot in counterargument, the denial is a solid thing. Emet-Selch cannot speak; there is no way to be heard. He is surrounded by the voices of thousands of mortals, and yet is held mute. The emptiness is like an open wound inside him, one that yawns wider with every one of his restored kin that he feeds into its uncaring maw.

With each world that he visits, the loneliness is identical as well. It exists in a curious space, inverted from its own definition: not for lack of people, but because of them.

* * *

He goes to the ruins of the Capitol many times over the years. Several of the ruins, rather. They are reflected across each shard, each one already entering its own individual decay, so that Emet-Selch can be privy to seeing his own home slowly crumble in a dozen different ways.

He goes anyway, half for his own waning sanity, and half as a reminder of his former craft. His offices are decimated, every single time. This is no surprise. Emet-Selch stands in the remaining versions of his own quarters and sees them overgrown with jungle vines, splintered by earthquakes and littered with pale insect cocoons. He looks at the unspooled cables of the elevators, hanging down like loops of rubbered intestines. Each version of Amaurot feels like the home of a stranger already, reclaimed by tiny scavengers which gnaw on the books of ancient libraries, ignorant of the knowledge they ingest with each page.

He always stops by Hythlodaeus's rooms last. He always forces himself to look.

On the Second one afternoon, Emet-Selch finds himself wandering the Capitol's streets without any real purpose, following his own bootprints as they drift around the corners of each avenue. Erosion is conquering the city relentlessly on this shard; each time Emet-Selch comes back, there is more and more soil piling up on the walkways, inching higher along the towers. Loam settles in possessively around the apartments. Scrubby bushes seek to take root in every crevice of the stone they can find, wearing down even Ascian craft with their insistence.

Shadows dart over his path, swaying at an odd angle; curious, Emet-Selch cranes his head up and sees one of the battered lampposts hanging crazily in its moorings, wavering with each stray breeze. Its light has long been extinguished, the crystal shattered by impact or careless scavengers. Ragged curtains of ivy drip down from its neck like a debutante's torn lace. Another casualty of time, and unremarkable for it.

But the combination of vine and metal stirs something in the back of Emet-Selch's mind, impressions resurrecting themselves like voidsent from a dusty tomb: there had been a concept he had promised Halmarult long before the Final Days, to better improve the lighting along a narrow batch of corridors in the Capitol. Halmarult had wanted it to look natural, to blend in with the surrounding flora. Emet-Selch had pretended to wave the request off, but had allowed his pen to secretly wander in the evenings, scrawling out design after design until he had described an entire inky forest, stretching end to end across his desk blotter.

The theory behind the concept is rusty, but he scrounges for it anyway. Three leaves, fanning around the central lighting crystal. Smaller sub-crystals, hooked into a second spread of smaller branches, aspected to Fire as well as Water with a few Wind settings to prevent humidity from settling in.

In the stillness of Amaurot, the instincts of millenia overtake him. Moving without conscious thought, Emet-Selch stretches his hand up towards the damaged lamp, and watches the heavy coating of ivy undo itself, delicate tendrils untwining as living aether surrenders to his will. He weaves it back into the pole with a few flicks of his fingers, idly reinforcing the metal's integrity and undoing years of weather-decay with only a thought. Whimsey drives him forward; he leaves his hand outstretched, flipping through concept after concept in his mind until aether gathers itself back into the lamp's illumination chamber, congealing around the shattered crystal and mending it as well.

Light sputters, and then pulses forth in a diffuse glow across the street. It bathes the dirt in a warm, amber haze, rippling over earth and stone alike. The aether already simmering in his grip obeys with ease; it spreads out eagerly from the lamppost's crest, etching the framework veins of three massive leaves upon the air before starting to build itself in full.

Layer by layer, translucent emerald scales sprout across the new design. The crystal's light is filtered through a dozen degrees of color, caught and refracted until - shining proudly on its own - the lamppost blooms like a sun shining through an entire forest's worth of leaves. The pattern unfolds so smoothly, so effortlessly that Emet-Selch nearly manifests the rest of it from habit. He had redesigned the base of it so that it could be better moored in place, had adjusted the neck of the lamp so that it could turn in mimicry of the path of the sun. Runner vines had been meant to run down the pole in place of cabling. It had been cleverly made, a piece that he knew Halmarult would have loved: a design which needed no justification for its beauty save the simple joy of it.

His willpower weakens, then yields. Desire overtakes it, and the molten glimmer of fresh aether begins to wind along the lamppost, manifesting Emet-Selch's imagination into reality. Leaves hatch themselves out of metal, transforming into crystal even as they fan through the air. New roots dig into the soil, burrowing alongside the brambles and grasses that clog the streets. For a moment, Emet-Selch can think of nothing else save pure creation - nothing but the delight of shaping the world, of breathing new ideas into life. His thoughts are clean of the disdain of the sundered races; he is free from the scorn waiting among them.

For a moment, Emet-Selch remembers what his people were always meant to be: caretakers of their star, nurturing both life and imagination.

He could fix Amaurot. Any of its reflections, all of them. He could rebuild rooms of tranquility and peace, halls where endless patience would reign, and debates would once more be conducted with proper measures. Floor by floor, tower by tower, Emet-Selch could restore the Capitol on any one of these shards, returning it to pristine splendor in order to wait for its citizens to return. Half of him already aches to begin the work. He can see the outlines in his mind, fiercely enough that the concepts themselves threaten to leap from the stray currents of aether still lingering on his fingers; the Lifestream is ready and waiting.

Together as a people once more, perhaps they could reconstruct their city. From there, a nation. From a nation into a world. Here, Emet-Selch could revive not only the Ascians who were lost, but their entire way of life: his gentle, soft people who had flourished over uncounted eons, following a legacy of wonder and curiosity, who had treasured harmony and the strength of a community united together - and who had known, keenly, the dangers of hate and competition, of rejection and divisiveness, and who had each held a love so strong for one another that their own souls had been willingly given to it.

Here, they could heal. It could be a paradise tended by them all, taking in every newfound Ascian and providing them with a shelter free from malice. One by one, they would fill the streets again; the work to restore Zodiark would be slower, but at least some of them would be spared from having to force their way through the shards. It would be safe.

Except for Hydaelyn.

She would not suffer Her enemy's chosen to linger. She would raise champions by the handful, empowering them relentlessly - even children if need be, just like the Thirteenth - and whisper stories in their ears of threats and salvation, until they would be willing to perform any brutality imaginable. Common adventurers would be attracted to the promise of the city as well, ripe with bounty for them to pillage and claim for their own, caring only to squabble over the bloody remains. They might enslave Emet-Selch's restored people; they might force them to become enthralled to Hydaelyn, claiming the act to be just, to be _righteous _when fighting against a faceless enemy that they do not even know the truth of.

He cannot do this to his own people. Lahabrea, Elidibus, himself - the three of them cannot offer a new promise, only to have it punish those who attempt to reach for it. He will not lay out his people to die a second time, not by his own hands.

Emet-Selch hesitates, and then looks back up to the lamppost. He reaches up his palm towards it, drawing every shred of aether relentlessly back into his body, so that the tiny sun cradled within its branches dims, and then goes out.

* * *

The years move on, burying the ruins of the Capitol further under oceans, forests, dust. Civilizations grow and flourish on the shards; they die just as readily, their remains churned beneath the soil to make room for others to repeat the same mistakes, age after age.

Nowhere in any city he visits is there the peace of Amaurot.

Instead, there are roads marked with guarded walls, countries delineated by their prejudices. Here, there are people who see nothing of the world around them, who allow their actions to spill out unchecked and laugh shamelessly when their chaos harms their own kind, saying: _they weren't anyone important anyway_. Misery becomes dressed as virtue, cruelty as strength. Everyone's heads bob in smug agreement.

There is no room for the softness of his people in any of the worlds which Hydaelyn has created. There is no room for softness at all.

_People like that can't exist_, the sundered races say, and so no one tries.

And, like a disease so slow that it disguises itself as a turning of the seasons, it begins to happen to them as well. Emet-Selch sees it first in Lahabrea when the man barks out an angry response to a passing question - bursting out with a sharp, defensive retort, with no motion to either explain himself, or repair the act. Then he notices it in himself next, creeping in like a regional accent, contempt taking up room in his mouth. The longer Emet-Selch spends time in these mortal worlds, the more often he uses their language to defend himself from their scorn. He sows poisons in his work, stacking up civilizations only so they can inevitably fall upon themselves, crafting hollow principles for hollow souls: an inversion to everything he has ever trained for, building cities that devour those who live inside them.

He becomes ill-behaved. There is no purpose in speaking words of understanding or mindfulness if there is no one around to hear them. He does not have the energy to argue anymore. It is simpler to strike out with bitterness, pushing others away before they can wound him first. He smothers each inkling of hope before it can be allowed to mislead him. He sneers with the same bravado when faced with mortal bragging, trying not to listen, trying not to care.

_You always look so sad_, he hears one day while walking on the Fifth. He is wearing the disguise of a visiting alchemist on that star, of enough novelty to earn his way to the local mayor's tables. Already, he is tired of having to play nice.

_I am_, he replies. He is too weary to dissemble, or to care about the consequences of honesty. _I am._

But the words erode at his self-control, making him yearn to reach out again - just in case this world might surprise him - and later on, at the evening meal, he lets himself be drawn out despite his own caution.

He tries to explain, with the easiest, most vague excuses that run parallel - that he dislikes watching another nation's conditions in their mining camps, that he has been watching the carelessness of hunters exhaust a nearby forest, that the increased taxation on the western trade routes benefits no one. At first, they listen out of curiosity. Then their reactions go through bemusement to indifference, and always to dismissal. His concerns do not profit their pockets; they are imaginary at best, inconvenient to hear.

Instead, Emet-Selch watches them turn back to their own conversations, placid and unworried. He listens to them talk, braying with self-congratulatory smugness together, like a nest of vipers coiling together in a summer heat. _That's what you get for hiring out of town, they're all slipshod laborers out there, trying to cheat anyone they can find. Of course foreigners don't understand what real civilization is like, what did you expect? Every time that new appraiser opens her mouth, I can't _**_believe_**_ the foolishness that comes out of it. Tell me the latest rumors on his family, I need something fresh for entertainment._

Emet-Selch stares at his plate. Oil and fat congeal in pale drops across the cooling vegetables, speckling the untouched meats. Out of all the long years he has debated, this topic had been one left untouched since childhood, and even then it had been pure rhetoric: he has never expected to defend _why _it is so important to care.

"Would you give your life to save another?" he asks, breaking into a moment of quiet between two dishes being served. "A stranger you've never met before, dwelling on the other side of the world, who will not even know your name. If there was no glory in it, nor reward - only the knowledge that they would live on - would you do it?"

_Of course not_, is the reply. A fresh wave of laughter rises around the table, a crescendo of mockery. _No one in their right mind would be that _**_stupid_**_._

Emet-Selch does not finish his meal that night. No one present does.

* * *

The gentleness in him finishes burning away first, husking like a spiderweb under heat.

Over the centuries, Emet-Selch watches cousin slaughter cousin, parents murder children, mass executions conducted under the facade of purification. He sees magicks white and black perform the same atrocities while claiming different sides of justice. Each time, the mortal races choose to kill one another first, rather than lay down their own lives for the whole. Those few who do step outside their limitations are praised early on as heroes - and then are promptly forgotten, used eagerly by those who would rather sacrifice a single stranger than to risk their own fortunes.

Too few, too little. Civilizations pass, and the sundered races remain the same. Only their names change, the boundaries of their cities, the newest excuses they have for intolerance. Each world remains a mere resource to exploit, territory to carve up and claim. Each nation dreams only of its own glories, and walks a path towards them on their neighbor's bones.

Eventually, Emet-Selch flees from his own desperation, seeking Lahabrea out in a weak hope that the other man might have found a distraction, if nothing else. He traces the man from shard to shard, ghosting past the silent fractions of Zodiark in His lunar prison, catching rumors from the other Ascians - Igeyohrm's expression hard and cold as she shakes her head, and turns resolutely back to her work - until finally landing on the Second.

He can spot the aether gone wrong long before he can smell it. Coils of rancid power bubble in the pit of a valley nestled between several mountains, like a whirlpool of energy poured into the landscape and left to rot. Beside it, the beacon of Lahabrea's soul stands out like a blot of fire on the slope of the lowest hill; when Emet-Selch lands a few yalms away, the Speaker is staring down at the murk, arms stiffly folded. He does not move to offer a greeting. His mouth is a flat line.

Below them in the valley, monsters rampage. They are terrestrial vilekin of a concept that Emet-Selch distantly remembers as being too hazardous for public use, though the phantomologists of the Words would have kept a copy for their own records. Multi-legged and sinuous, the vilekin clamber across the farm buildings with an indiscriminate hunger. Their mandibles tear apart the sturdy wooden fences like paper. They rip through the scattered bodies of what look like soldiers with equal ease, battered armor crunching easily under pressure.

The shock of their brutality startles Emet-Selch, in a way he had forgotten he could be. "What have you wrought?" he whispers aloud. "What _happened_ here?"

The answer is clearly Lahabrea. The man does not stir from his sober regard of the valley, his gaze fixed strictly on the turmoil. His mask is off; Emet-Selch can see the shadows beneath his eyes, markers of exhaustion. "It wasn't what I intended," their Speaker admits quietly. The words are bewildered, hesitant, as if baffled by his own handiwork. "I had thought to craft a more elegant response, something more like a dragon, or a griffin, perhaps. But I suppose - I suppose this will do."

As if in punctuation to his words, one monster screeches in a long, chattering roar, and dives for a body nearly hidden beneath a crushed wagon. Another vilekin catches it midway; they tussle over the corpse, swarming and curling angrily around their prize until it finally tears apart, and sends them both sprawling. Having no other information, Emet-Selch squints at the murky aether still stewing in the fields. There is no pattern that he can identify in its whorls, no reason for its existence; if this is Lahabrea's craftsmanship as well, there is no signature attached.

He reaches out to try and feel his way through the intended pattern - and bites back a curse as the aether sears him, a foul imbalance that seeks to feed with equal hunger as the vilekin below.

Lahabrea glances over at him at last, even as Emet-Selch shakes the sting of power away. "These people," the man begins, and then elaborates, his lip curling. "These _sundered_. They were merely farmers here, in this valley - but some of them had invited aetherologists to come in partnership, researching how to better improve the land's irrigation. Together, they developed an experimental conduit of wind and water aether, naturally encouraging the flow from higher in the mountains without overtaxing the larger ecosystem. It was... elegant, truly," he admits, and here his voice wanders once more, lost in recall. "It made me want to create again, to make something _new_, something none of us have ever seen before. I haven't in so long. Not for years now, I think."

_Longer_, Emet-Selch knows, but he keeps that fact silent. "Did they miscalculate?"

The response is a scoff. "Only in their brethren's goodwill. The next city over disliked the chance that mere _farmers _might have achieved such developments on their own. They feared the risk of this valley becoming self-sufficient, and potential rivals in trade. And so," Lahabrea continues, hands tightening on his arms until his fingers fist in the fabric of his robes, "the city sent its soldiers here to shatter the lattice, and burn the fields as punishment so that the farmers would starve. Then, out of further pettiness, their arcanists distorted what remained of the lattice to ruin the elemental balance, so that no one would seek to repeat such a feat for themselves. Those who sought to defend their work were destroyed along with the rest. This is _foolishness_, Emet-Selch." At last, Lahabrea whirls, life coming back into his expression as he bares his teeth - too confused for pure outrage, too horrified for anger. "If the grain had been diseased, or the land unable to bear the change, or even if the people themselves would have been sickened by some quality in it - _any_ of those would have been reason to stop the experiment. But this? Pure greed, and nothing more."

The winds pick up, air currents swelling in a burst of power which brings the stench of the festering aether back up to them. Emet-Selch wrinkles his nose. Despite the fetid ruin that has been left behind, the damage is not irreversible. Given time, the Lifestream will correct the worst of it, so long as it is allowed to flow naturally once more.

Still he hesitates. There is no tangible reason why he offers the question. Only a thin, futile hope for a better outcome, something different he has not heard before. "Did you ask if they were willing - "

"Of _course_ I tried to reason with them first!" Lahabrea snaps. The violence of the interruption is like a slap across Emet-Selch's mouth; it shuts his teeth for him. "They are no different from any nation on this shard, here or any other! Hydaelyn has given our star to these creatures - a world that we have tended to for eon upon eon, dedicating each and every one of our people's lives to its well-being, and they will _ruin_ it. And She does not care either, so long as She spites our lord. _She_ is the worst of them all."

With that, the man inhales deeply, and for a moment, Emet-Selch thinks it is over. Lahabrea drops his hands to his sides, opening and closing them powerlessly. His breathing calms; his shoulders go slack, bowed by a gravity heavier than any star.

When he speaks again, it is so quietly that Emet-Selch nearly misses it.

"Very well, then, Hydaelyn." Gaze back upon the valley, Lahabrea continues aloud, ignoring all common sense as he makes promises to the earth itself. "If brutality is what Your favored creatures thrive on, then I will return it to them fourteenfold. I will teach them the price of what meat they would sup upon. I will _show_ them the pinnacle of what they champion with my _own _hands."

For all the dangers that come with invoking their enemy's name, it is the sudden lack of passion which is most alarming about Lahabrea's words. Between the two threats - a god, or their Speaker gone insane - Emet-Selch chooses the more dangerous one. "Lahabrea." He takes a step closer; when no lightning tears through him in warning, he takes another, and then another, until he is beside the other man, reaching out to push back Lahabrea's hood. "Hydaelyn's chosen may be stronger than us for the moment, but that doesn't mean we have to lower ourselves to their methods. At least remember your dignity as an Ascian."

Exposed to the sun, Lahabrea blinks. His hair is unkempt; Emet-Selch can already tell that the man is not remembering to take proper care of his latest vessel, exhausted and worn to the bone. His eyes are wet. "It's what they deserve," he replies tonelessly, his mouth trying to stay firm, but failing at the corners. "What else _is_ there, Emet-Selch? Even if we _did_ give the shards to them, these worlds would be destroyed either way in their hands. These _things _do not deserve to inherit." With a rough shake of his head, Lahabrea brandishes a hand towards the wreckage of the fields, and then repeats the gesture more forcefully, reality itself making proof for his reasoning. "Tell me there is _any_ other language they understand, Emet-Selch. Explain to me _how_ we can make them listen. Debate with me, best me on the floor, and I will _gladly_ yield to your logic."

The opportunity opens wide. It waits, and offers no inspiration. If there is a counterargument to Lahabrea's case, Emet-Selch cannot find it. The same hypocrisy of disdain coats his tongue; he is already no better than the shadows they must fight. Lahabrea is correct. There is no purpose in giving respect to creatures who would trample over them all.

"Lahabrea," he attempts anyway, navigating along the boundary of desperation only by turning a blind eye to it. "It no longer matters if they listen or not. These people have demonstrated that they do not wish to embrace the stewardship of their own worlds, and we cannot force them into it. We can only try to recover the Source as it should be. Once we restore our people, we can determine the proper balance with these other races - _after_ they have been healed to the full of their capacities, along with the rest of us."

The logic rings close to a properly Ascian response, and for a moment - a brief, blessed moment - Emet-Selch almost feels like one again in truth.

Then the heartbeat passes; they are still stranded there on the Second, wearing the wrong flesh and carrying the wrong words on their tongues. He watches Lahabrea make a long, shuddering sigh, looking away in silence; then the man finally stretches his fingers in resignation towards the valley below, and allows it to burn.

* * *

Elidibus tries to convince them both to take partners: a poor attempt after the Thirteenth to give each other company, and perhaps some form of much-needed stability.

It is a good idea. It is also, unfortunately, much too late.

There is no one else on all the worlds who remembers who they truly are. Hydaelyn's insidious subterfuge has done its work; the few scholars who know of Ascians term them enemies of all life itself. Unsundered and recovered, they have only each other - and, like mice trapped starving in a box, they turn upon one another.

The process of hate is a slow one, laid out in experimental methods that they feel out blindly, like arguing an unfamiliar topic on the debate floor. Each step is new. Even this is merely an act of creation as well, as if they cannot escape their own natures - the energies of affection being transformed into those of loathing, imitating the shallow resentments of the lesser shadows. It is a strange manner of gift, one that Emet-Selch struggles to quantify. Despite their newfound madness - possessed by an anger which has infected them all - they still understand one another, far beyond any mortal scope. They still love one another. They understand one other's truths. No one else _knows_ them in all their fullness, and no one else is like them - and, equally, no one else can hate them as much as another Ascian can, knowing intimately how much they have lost with each immortal year, and how much they still continue to lose.

It digs into his every waking thought, a low-level pain that Emet-Selch pushes down to the bottom of his awareness, but which never entirely fades. It dwells in every contempt-filled witticism Emet-Selch spits at the rest of the Convocation, desperately trying to shove them away so that they don't look at him, don't _see _what he is becoming, don't acknowledge his behavior as real. The ache of it is a perpetual distraction. If only he could _think_ more clearly, he could figure it out. Logically, none of this should be happening to them - and yet, it is.

It is.

He catches Igeyorhm in passing on the Sixth, listening to her rattle off her report with angry, clipped syllables, flowing in and out of Ascian and the common tongue as if neither language has enough curses for what she needs to profess. The sight of her brings back the sudden, painful recollection of the Thirteenth - and with it, like a broken song that can only repeat the same measure over and over, the way that its heroes had descended into voidsent themselves. Immersed too long in the methods of their most reviled enemies, they became one and the same, once-champions that were the final destroyers of their own star.

He pushes the comparison away, and leaves Igeyorhm behind with it.

Their people decay. Sundered and unsundered alike begin to crumble over the centuries; their immortality is no longer a promise, but a curse. Emet-Selch decays with them. He pushes away every reminder of the peace which had thrived in the Capitol, unable to endure the reminder of days that feel forever gone now. His sense of himself slips further, becoming thin and hidden, a weakened parody of the creature he has transformed into. It is easier to shut away those memories of himself, shoving them down, packing them small - putting his identity somewhere where it can no longer be injured by the world, somewhere where it will perish just a little bit slower. With every shard he visits, Emet-Selch scrapes away another piece of himself. He practices until the numbness becomes familiar, as if he is shutting his eyes and closing his mouth while being sunk deep into cold water, counting out the moments until he can breathe again.

It affects them all, inevitably. Igeyorhm, Lahabrea. Mitron, Loghrif. Himself. Steeped in new societies, all they can do is attempt to push back against the endless mockery of Ascian ways - _no one would do such things, no one would be so _**_foolish _**\- and lash back in desperate, clumsy violence. Emet-Selch can feel it twisting himself further and further away from recognition. He strikes out at any question posed towards him with a sarcasm he has learned over time, aping aggression out of self-defense. Even when speaking their native tongue, none of them have any harmony in the inflections; they are naturalized to the bitter brutality of the divided worlds, and carry the same malice in their teeth.

At least in this, too, they are still united as a people: they all despair together in equal perversion of their souls.

It is a small mercy that they must embark on a course of violence, Emet-Selch decides, after watching another city break apart on the Source. When all they can craft are monsters, it is easy to have the intended effect if their creations are simply needed to kill.

* * *

Nabriales dies. It is an accident on the Twelfth, an unexpected overloaded storm during the Rejoining, shredding him with bolt after bolt of lightning that rends him from his mortal form and disorients his soul right as the star dissolves. Emet-Selch is present, as are the rest of them to celebrate the glory of another shard restored; when it comes time to withdraw, pulling away to a safe enough world to avoid being swept up in the energies, they are one Ascian short.

The casualty is sobering. Only emptiness remains where the Twelfth had shone; there is nothing left to dredge through. At best, Nabriales's soul might have simply merged with the rest of the star's aether, and has already been fed back into his presence on the Source. At worst - at worst, well, there are twelve more reflections to spare.

Lahabrea refuses to revive their kinsman. Even worse, he refuses to explain why. The last words the two of them had exchanged had been an argument, and now he simply shrugs when asked to go and search, dropping comments about how Nabriales _deserves_ to stay dead for a little while. If only as a lesson.

When he is asked in turn, Emet-Selch forces himself to laugh, mocking and desperate and coming up with every excuse he can think of to avoid the task - anything but the truth that he suspects he and Lahabrea both share. Emet-Selch had witnessed the quarrel between them. He saw the curl of Lahabrea's lip, the hunching of Nabriales's shoulders. If he tried to restore the latter now, that memory would be foremost in what he offers the man: Nabriales would wake fresh with that bile upon his lips, hate already guided towards his heart.

It is Elidibus who finally does the work, casting them both reproachful, tired looks that Emet-Selch pretends to ignore.

At the next gathering - with the new shard of Nabriales in tow, Lahabrea looking away even as his name is called - it is Mitron who speaks up, broaching the uneasy silence that settles over them all after the opening remarks. "I have wondered if we should change tactics." The statement begins tentatively, like a reversed position on the debate floor, but it gathers strength moment by moment. "I know that we have chosen caution in the past, but should we not seek to embed as many Ascians as we can in mortal governments? We may not have enough now, but if we restored more of us, took over entire generations of councils, perhaps we could even convince each shard to share our faith in the Rejoining. At least then, they might not view it with fear - "

In that logic, Emet-Selch can already predict Hydaelyn's inevitable reaction: swift and without mercy. He can already imagine their panicked, terrified deaths; he can predict Mitron's subsequent despair with equal clarity, all those brilliant hopes ruined in the mud. "Why would you want _more _of our people to suffer through this?" he hisses, cutting off the rest of Mitron's words. "Perhaps you're right. Perhaps I _should_ seek out every Ascian who has ever bested me in debate, and bring them kicking and screaming back to awareness here, so that they too may _enjoy_ what has happened to our star. And for what purpose, exactly?" He sweeps an arm wide towards the gaping emptiness of the rift around them; all eyes are on him now, and he will drive the point home. "Nothing of what we do upon these shards will matter. Why waste the effort in easing the terrors of these ghosts, when their souls will not even remember it afterwards? I can think of nothing more _pointless_."

His brethren around him stare, shocked and frozen. Only Lahabrea is able to shake off the momentary paralysis, snapping out a dry laugh that borders on hysteria, one that Emet-Selch nearly echoes in kind; he can feel his own scorn waiting in his teeth, mixed with the urge to vomit. If he was among the mortal races now, they would be appropriately intimidated - they would take the warning and stop, cowed by the display of a predator, driven by their own instinct for survival first.

Mitron is not such a being. They stare, aghast at what has become of the paragons of their people. "But if none of this matters," they finally whisper, "then does _any _of it?"

The danger of the question cuts too close to the ache in Emet-Selch's chest, growing tighter with each heartbeat. "What a _droll _idea," he manages to snap out, leaning on disgust like a crutch even as he loathes the taste of it. The words are like lashes from his tongue, cutting himself in the process with each strike. It feels foul to speak with such disdain; Emet-Selch sinks into it anyway, all to avoid looking at Mitron's conclusion head-on. "_Enough_. You prattle, rather than find solutions. If nothing matters, then we may choose to seize the victory through any means necessary. Should we succeed, then none among the living will be penalized by our actions. And if we fail - well, I suppose it will be the same result, won't it?"

He turns aside to escape the wound of Mitron's mouth, slack and disbelieving - only to find himself facing off against Loghrif's frown. "Mitron is right," they say, damningly. "I am - I am also concerned for us, Emet-Selch. I am worried for _you_."

The sincerity of the statement burns. Emet-Selch can feel the concern in it; it belongs to a kinder world, a kinder place than this. He cannot touch it in kind - he does not _deserve_ it, he is a beast that has no right to compassion from his own kind, and so he does not try.

"A little late _now_, wouldn't you say?" It feels almost natural, the way that Emet-Selch drops the words with flawless contempt. "Really, you fuss too much. We've survived this long - we've no choice in the matter. _Do_ try to scavenge some resolve for yourself, Loghrif. We may be immortal, but it's still a waste of time waiting for you to catch up."

The assembly is far from over. Emet-Selch flees anyway, turning on a heel and making a comment he barely hears, a half-formed sneer from habit. He runs, tearing through the void artlessly as he tries to escape the monster he has become before them all: as if the body he wears has become synonymous with his soul, and he has been performing a mummery of himself, a puppet strung together from robes and skin and a sigil.

He doesn't know which star he finally lands on. He is alone in the wilderness, and that is the only thing that matters as he staggers to a halt, wrenching off his mask and turning it around in his hands to stare at it. _Emet-Selch._ An honor and duty awarded for one who was meant to shepherd their people and their star together, to nurture the lives they had placed in his care. There was only one like it in all the Capitol; there is only one like it now.

He dissolves its aether with an absent thought, keeping the energies cupped in his palms. With laborious care, he carves it back into something simpler: a plain white shell, equal in rank to any of his people. He is Ascian. He belongs among them. He has not lost the right of it yet.

But as the unbound energies of the mask shimmer in his fingers, not yet fixed in form, Emet-Selch hesitates. Unbidden, the memory of Loghrif's voice drifts back to him. With it comes the pain on Mitron's face, the weariness of Elidibus's expression, and Emet-Selch feels a clench of guilt spasm through his chest, so fierce that - for a moment - he cannot breathe.

His attention wavers.

The aether collapses. The mask's pattern folds in upon itself like a paper pinwheel crumpling, and turns into molten lava, flowing across Emet-Selch's hands and down his wrists before he can arrest it. His agonized howl feels as if it comes straight from his soul: an echo of every invisible wound that still bleeds without a scar, even as his flesh sears and chars away. Skin and nerves dissolve under the heat, liquid stone clinging viscously to his bones and eating them away too.

For a moment, Emet-Selch clings to the physical pain like a bright point of sensation - a relief from everything else he is drowning in, unseen and untouchable - and then he tears free of the body, carrying only his shame with him as he escapes.

* * *

They hate each other freely after that. It passes the time. They make loathing into their new art form, instead of concertos and sculptures and mathematical formulas, a theater together that is as pathetic a parody of life as the echoes surrounding them. Emet-Selch embraces mortal flesh willingly, and mortal company with it: neither one matters if he hurts them. He does not feel like an Ascian anymore, like a proper citizen of Amaurot. He has forgotten what it is like to be gentle. He has forgotten what it is like to be surrounded by gentleness.

Elidibus becomes distant, turning inwards upon himself. Nabriales, arrogant with contempt. All of Lahabrea's inspiration is turned towards graceless malice now, grand schemes that leave only him laughing at the end over crude manipulations: their Speaker's voice tinged with scorn, all of his elegant rhetoric lost in clumsy speeches that even a child would have outgrown rehearsing. The man who could have convinced a civilization to resist its own doom is gone now, reduced to tantrums and overblown hyperboles, slipping from body to body in an unending need to manifest _something _new, even as the effort saps at his soul.

Together, they divide the shards like gamepieces on a board, unable to endure being close to one another and what they are becoming. It is a minor reprieve; Emet-Selch indulges in it to the hilt. As long as he is left alone by the others, he does not have to witness what they are turning into, layered in anguish and pretense. They - in turn - do not have to see how he is rotting from the inside, screaming with every childish smirk he wears grotesquely upon his lips. These days, it seems, Igeyohrm is always one breath short of breaking. Mitron stays aloof from everyone save Loghrif. No one can keep track of Pashtarot.

Lahabrea stops creating.

Emet-Selch cannot breathe their strength back into them. He does not know even where to begin, _how _he can begin, when the threads of all their identities have slipped through his fingers. He holds their memories precariously, clinging to them even as they become further soiled with each sun that passes. Damaged or not, twisted or not - they are still his kin.

They are immortal, but they are dying nonetheless. All they have is time, and they are somehow running out.

* * *

When he fights Lahabrea for the first time, he is made breathless by it.

They have tussled before, in playful matches of their youth to test their growing skills, discovering fresh avenues for their craft. Afterwards - when not matching one another on the debate floor - they had clashed out of occasional curiosity. Companions together in pushing the boundaries of their own discoveries, they had flung any number of concepts wildly at one another, trading merry comparisons of one another's technique.

Everything that came before was merely sparring compared to this. Every spite-ridden argument they have exchanged since the Sundering is a mere pleasantry leading up to this moment. The first open sneer that Emet-Selch had thrown in their Speaker's direction had been the spark; Lahabrea's taunting criticism of Emet-Selch's civilizations had been the tinder. It had only been a matter of time before violence burst free between them, like a boil so infected with pus that it stretched the skin to breaking at the slightest brush of contact.

They startle one another with the ire of their opening volleys, as if neither of them truly expected the degree of ferocity so readily bent towards the other. Base elements are the first volley: the earth splits, vomiting both flame and lightning from molten crevices that snap open at their feet. Winds shriek, sharp enough to scoop flesh away from bone as easily as fingers parting foam.

After that, however - once they have both finished recoiling, panting, staring at one another across the melted stone of the ancient viera city they have just desecrated - they begin in earnest.

Emet-Selch dives for the Lifestream first; he slams down restrictions on the local flow, constraining and redirecting its energies in a temporary tangle that sends its currents swirling in a mess. The elemental shield he flings before him is a copy of that matrix, a whirling maw of aether which is designed simply to devour anything unlucky enough to near its embrace. He has no time to do more, betting on the long game instead, quartering out the territory instinctively in order to dominate it.

Infrastructure is an Architect's tactic; evocation is a Speaker's. The instant that Lahabrea realizes that his resources are being limited, he uses his own aether instead. With a shout of rage, he pulls a monster from the essence of his soul, using a standard concept from the Words. The hydra he crafts bursts through the soil even as Lahabrea levitates deftly above it, his feet barely brushing the pristine, gleaming scales of its coiling necks.

Emet-Selch retorts with the first inspiration that comes to mind: a memory of ravens in flight, a whole flock of them crossing the snow in winter, black across white and icy blue. Cloudkin explode in a flurry from his sleeves, coiling in the air and darting at each serpentine head in distraction. They whirl deftly around the fanged maws, weaving and dancing - until finally breaking through in a single dark mass to dive directly for Lahabrea's face.

Each one of them wails with Igeyorhm's voice.

Lahabrea does not retreat. With a snap of his arm - dramatic, still so _dramatic_ \- the man converts the hydra's writhing mass into pillars of fire, hot enough that the wind explodes backwards in a rush. The trajectory of the flock is shattered, birds flung like haphazard confetti as their feathers crisp to cinders from the embers. Unrelenting, the flames bend and twist towards Emet-Selch, licking the air as it reaches for him next.

The world is drenched in Lahabrea's aether. It is coated with his rage.

It is Emet-Selch's turn not to be cowed. He twists his fingers in a curt gesture, flattening out the aether of the dying ravens with brisk efficiency, transforming them from animate creatures into mosaic tiles which bloom into a wall hanging between him and the other man. Black feathers reach towards the sky, tessellated into a pattern of frozen flight. Lahabrea's flames smash into the porcelain defense, baking the tiles like a second round through the oven - but it holds solid, the colors blistering and bubbling as heat chars them from the other side.

With the same force as yanking down a curtain, Emet-Selch drives the wall the rest of the way down, spinning its tiles higher and burying its foundations deep within the earth. The additional effort is a habit that delays him - he cannot help the automatic dislike of buildings without proper moorings - and before he can readdress the actual threat at hand, Lahabrea has already begun to advance.

Their Speaker doesn't bother with subtlety. Like a distant earthquake, Emet-Selch feels the shudder beneath his feet, vibrations bubbling into his bones. He has enough time to glance up to the trembling, chitinous colors of his wall before the chimera break through.

Instinct saves him from the first pair of jaws that lunge for his throat; Emet-Selch whirls away from the stampede, dodging the massive, leonine bodies which trample through the debris. Through the gaps in the rapidly-crumbling wall, he can see Lahabrea diving forward like a bolt of lightning, just starting to cross over the threshold of the shattered stones.

Emet-Selch inverts gravity.

It's a limited trick, inefficient without proper preparation and restricted to a localized sphere of influence - but it works. Taken off guard, Lahabrea is bounced like a pebble against the shell of the gravity sphere. The chimera already caught within the field shriek, dozens of different throats screeching in protest as they are flung towards the sky - and then strike the boundary of Emet-Selch's control, squirming as they are held in place along the edge of two warring natural laws.

He works fast, grabbing for the memory of a mercantile bazaar on the Fifth. Canopies and stalls explode out like a series of fireworks chained together, wooden beams and planks bursting from thin air and weaving together into empty stalls. They multiply with blinding speed into a maze of corridors and towers, converting the shattered remains of one civilization into one of the imagination, alive once more with Emet-Selch buried at its heart.

Above him, the chimera roar in frustration; he gropes for their energies directly, pinning down their signatures. Their originating concept is so basic that Emet-Selch scowls in disappointment, recognizing the prototype lessons of a student handbook. He pinpoints the gap in their structural stability so quickly it borders on insult, breaking the locks on their physical forms and rewriting their pattern with one of his own.

The beasts thrash and contort. Their flesh turns to thread, spooling outwards like tornado funnels, weaving into elaborate tapestries that decorate the bazaar. One by one, their bodies are converted into mere decorations which stretch out across the sky, rippling banners which illustrate ancient monsters and legends which have long lost their names. Even with Lahabrea's vast mastery over phantom creation, Emet-Selch has the advantage: all of Lahabrea's concepts are reused these days, with nothing truly original in their core, and Emet-Selch has seen them all before.

At first - in the silence, the sudden stillness of the air - he expects that it is over. Then, he feels the aether tremble. Above him, the embroidered beasts on each tapestry suddenly shimmer, turning to face him even though the cloth should have remained inanimate. Their jaws gape wide, threads melting like warm honey to stretch down in golden ropes, leaking fat drops of fluid which land with sinister innocence around Emet-Selch's boots.

He does not know if this mutation is born of his failings, or Lahabrea's. Wary of a death by cleverly-disguised acid, Emet-Selch frowns at one particular glob that spatters too close to his foot, and shifts backwards, squinting up at the congealing tapestries, trying to pinpoint if this is a new concept being invoked on purpose, or simply a mistake.

In his moment of distraction, Lahabrea strikes. The other man does not bother with attempting to navigate the maze: he breaks directly through it, wall by wall, ripping through the barriers in a bolt of pure darkness. The tapestries shred, thread and flesh twining together to shriek their intermingled death knell - and Lahabrea is there, abandoning all artfulness to plow straight through the air.

He hits Emet-Selch directly, grabbing him around the waist and yanking him off his feet by force. Sheer momentum pulls them both forward, smashing them both through a row of stalls; wood splinters and cracks, and Emet-Selch has barely enough time to shield his head before they plow into a storehouse, in and out again before rebounding against what feels like a tree. They strike the ground together in a blow that stuns Emet-Selch's wits, their bodies skidding and rolling to an eventual halt, their speed slowed fractionally by each root and stone that greets them.

He waits for the dizziness to pass, half-wondering if he has already sustained some form of cranial injury that would be better served by abandoning his body now, rather than wait through a slow demise. Lahabrea's arm is draped over his chest. The man is face-down in the grass, breathing fitfully, but alive.

_More's the pity_, Emet-Selch thinks, and drops his head back against the dirt.

Gradually, Lahabrea recovers a hold on awareness, stirring fitfully as he wanders back through whatever pains he earned for ignoring the fact that mortal flesh loses first when pitched against solid stone. Emet-Selch does not bother trying for that much, staring up at the sky while his lungs heave at their own pace. The fight in him has inexplicably drained away, leaving only a hollowness behind, an emptiness so complete that he can't even remember why he was so angry to begin with.

"Emet-Selch," Lahabrea slurs. The man pushes himself up laboriously on an arm, and then slumps back across Emet-Selch's body, one of his elbows digging painfully into what feels like a bruised rib. "_Hades_. Do you remember the first time we met?"

Emet-Selch watches the blur of leaves overhead, just over the curve of Lahabrea's shoulder. "Those days are too long in the past."

In reply, Lahabrea reaches out with a fumbling palm and shoves Emet-Selch's mask up brusquely in a painful scrape, before pawing it completely off into the grass.

"Try hard," he utters, and then leans down.

The taste of Lahabrea's mouth has always been like a storm. Centuries and Ardors have not changed this. The kiss their Speaker offers this time is not clean: it is hungry and raw and angry, the fangs of his mask digging in hard against the skin as he _pulls_ at Emet-Selch's aether in ruthless demand.

It is easier to yield at first; Emet-Selch is too tired to resist the searing rush of Lahabrea's need. The edges of their souls brush together, blunting the world into a hazy lassitude. His own aether instinctively recognizes Lahabrea's; he can feel how brittle the other Ascian's essence has become, wrapped like a thinning spiderweb around his current vessel. The boundaries between them soften even as Emet-Selch opens his mouth willingly to Lahabrea's tongue, and to all of the man's desperate hunger.

He does not lack for good days with their Speaker. Fragments of memory rich with Amaurot's sweetness drift up through his mind, saturated with color. Lahabrea turning proudly towards him down a hallway, holding a hawk on his wrist whose feathers were made from autumn leaves. The finale of one of their Speaker's crowning debates, which had lasted for a full three seasons before Lahabrea's last opponent had relinquished the floor with a laugh and a bow. A late evening when Emet-Selch had overheard Lahabrea and Nabriales talking together in an office down the hall, their shared merriment blending like warm ripples over the chimes of their wineglasses being refilled.

An image of Lahabrea mid-design, glancing up from a worktable with his mask up and his guard down: a moment of curiosity that had melted into a guileless, delighted smile.

Like sunbeams on a summer afternoon, Emet-Selch holds the pleasure of them bright in his mind, feeling the other man's aether stir groggily in resonance - its brilliance flickering as it is reminded of how clearly it once shone - and the way that Lahabrea makes a suddenly fervent, pleading noise against him.

But those are not the only memories of Lahabrea that Emet-Selch keeps, and he feels the rest already rising, fetid and ugly. He steels himself, pushing the other man back physically and spiritually before they can fully surface, and keeps their pollution trapped inside the shell of his own soul.

As a mercy, Lahabrea does not fight him this time. The man shifts his weight back instead so that he can brace himself across Emet-Selch's chest. His lips are damp; he is panting slightly, his breathing uneven. "_Fix_ this, Hades." For a moment, there is only rage and desperation in his expression - then, something softens as Lahabrea twines his fingers in Emet-Selch's robes, and his voice is familiar once more, unbound from its madness. "We three should be unsundered, but it feels as if there are cracks in everything, _everywhere_, and nothing will halt their spread. _Please_, Hades. There _must_ be something we can do to change what is happening."

Helpless, Emet-Selch stares up at him, feeling the same futility matched on his own face. He knows the dissonance Lahabrea speaks of; it spreads further through his own soul with each day. He knows that there is more to their Speaker, just as vividly as he knows that he once lived in a city whose streets were dressed in serenity, on a star where the concept of community was more than a myth. All of it is so distant now, so disconnected from his present self. They have both become such strange, misshapen things, maelstroms of power and malice that only the insane would extol. Like creatures of the new stars, their souls have become severed from their true histories, leaving them orphaned and alone.

In these broken worlds, the only way they have survived is by becoming broken themselves.

Slowly, Emet-Selch stretches up his hand, pulling off Lahabrea's mask and dropping it with equal carelessness in the dirt. He slides his fingers around the back of the other man's neck, cupping it with his palm and holding him steady. It seems so long since he has touched another like this - the pressure meant to soothe, not sear - that Emet-Selch allows his fingertips to trace along the man's skin, marveling over the way that Lahabrea shivers against his hand. They are tangled together, arms and knees and pain intermingled: even in this, they are still one.

"Close your eyes," he pleads softly. It feels as if he has been saying those exact words forever - forever, because he has felt like this for so long that time itself has ceased to exist. "Close your eyes, and let this be but a child's dream - a figment that will be gone by morning. By the time you wake, everything will be restored. We will all heal together once we are home. I will write your sigil in red ink myself upon your skin, and read aloud all your stories from the records. I will recall you as you should be," he swears, each word barely a whisper. "And afterwards - when the time comes, Lahabrea, then do the same for me."

It is a lie, what he promises Lahabrea. It is equally a lie how Lahabrea nods reluctantly in turn, swallowing down the truth they both know. If neither one of them speaks it aloud, they can pretend it will never manifest. if it never manifests, it can never be distorted in its own making.

He is no fool. Emet-Selch is a builder twice over; as an Ascian and their Architect, he can chart their failures without needing instruments more sophisticated than his own eyes and ears. Their course has gone off-track millennia ago. Everything he makes has its own death lurking at its heart now, because he can craft nothing else _but_ death - nations, machinations, family lines - and he can no longer speak his native tongue. There is only grave dust left within him, dry earth gone fallow, and Lahabrea's fingers claw his chest like blunt trowels, uselessly begging.

But they are all stars now, and they are not going quietly, even as they all they can do is use themselves for fuel.

* * *

_Remember us_, he asks of his brethren, of the mortal races, of Warriors both Light and Dark. His aether is burning, brilliance searing him all the way through, ripping apart his flesh and soul with equal impartiality. He can barely see through the agony of it. _Remember_.

_Remember me_, he whispers, rages, begs - and then, forgets.


End file.
